From the director who gave us gems like X-Men 1 & 2, Usual Suspects and the amazing Dr. House, MD (on TV), comes the latest form of get rich quick scheme.
Spinning a new (out of control) line into the original story, The Director assumes he can do anything he wants with his money. He writes the story, writes the script, directs it, produces it, hires freshers who wont question the script and waste celluloid plus people’s time.
Mysteriously enough, superman returns from deep space. When did he go in the first place? If my memory serves me right, there was no ’going away’ incident in Superman-IV? If the director was looking for an excuse to explain the long delay between Superman-IV and this movie, a 1-minute tribute to Christopher Reeves would have been sufficient.
He might have even tried to state that ’he required the time to wipe off the memories of Superman-IV from audience’s minds.’ Though in this day and age of Internet / iMDB, such a feat is hard. Will Smith’s/Tommy Lee Jone’s memory zinger from MiB is better at erasing memories.
Anyways, the man of steel is back. His space-ship travels the expanse of the vast space. The space ship locates the third rock from the sun, locates the continent of US, locates his home town Small-ville (sounds like he is using Google Earth) and then - CRASHES into his ol’ momma’s ready-to-reap fields, destroying a good portion of it.
Come on man, Star Trek captains didnot have seat-belts and this guy’s Auto-Pilot can’t land. Even the ill-fated Apollo-13 performed better.
Anyways, while his bold mother looks into the pit, she discovers a fairly intact crystal thing (the ship) and the man of steel emerges from nearby and startles her. He has got underclothes on. Must be to avoid a PG rating. Or maybe the actor doesnot like showing his body. Arnie was proud to arrive in the buff for T-1, T-2 & T-3. Someone tell the old lady to not look into pits of crashed ships. Remember MiB?
Note: Swaroski may want to capitalise on this one and design keyrings that look like the ’state-of-art’ alien technology spaceship.
After arrival, man of steel lands up at the Daily Planet whose offices are headed for destruction just as this movie. The new Lois Lane has none of the charms of Margot Kidder and looks more like a distressed mother who is trying to raise a single family and work at the same time. Lucky for her, she sleeps around with the Boss’s nephew and can get away inspite of being a slacker. An asthamatic kid is introduced as her brood, and we as Indians, instantly suspect there is some scandal that justifies this kid’s presence.
Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) deserves the title of the most influential character in this movie. His schemes are hair-brained as ever and portrayed brilliantly by Spacey. Spacey has acted in alien/mad scientist movies before and is without doubt, a superb actor.
A couple of loosely placed action sequences later, Superman foils Luther’s plan. Saves New York from certain destruction (not again!) and crashes to Earth conveniently into a park area. Even Dr. House can do nothing to save this man of steel (they cant get a syringe into his thick hide). So they do the next best thing - wire him up to the body monitors, keep the meter running and hopefully send the bill to City Council for re-imbursement. After all, no one knows who Superman is. No social security, medical insurance records. The hospitals bills of a good samaritan must be paid by the city which benefits the most from his services to humanity.
Throughout the movie, Lois Lane seems not to know that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person. In S-2, Lois discovers that they are the same and falls in love with his earthy side (they even sleep together). All the sleeping together without calculating ovulation tables and protection, results in a woman getting seeded. Sure enough, the asthamatic kid is Superman’s kid.
Dumb Woman + Dumb Man = Pregnancy
In a moment of emotional charge, Lois Lane reveals to a comatose superman that he is now a father and should prepare to pay some kind of child support. Next morning - Superman is gone from the hospital. Flew out the window. Most new fathers want to do this these days. Pity we dont have wings.
Plenty of emotional outbursts throughtout the movie. In a very Hulk / Ang Lee style, almost 60% of the movie is family drama. Makes you feel like you are watching a weekend run of soap on TV (the movie is 3 hours long). Much that needed to be said, remains unsaid and much that could have been kept private, is exposed to the audience.
Anyways, at the end of the movie, the man of steel does not take outright responsibility of the child and choses to go off to deep space. So will the Director after, he reads my review.